People would save their pet before helping a stranger survey finds

News

Would a stranger save your life? It may depend on who you are, where you live and whether you’ve got a family, according to a survey for Anthony Nolan, a charity which relies on the kindness of strangers.

People in the South East are more likely to come to the aid of their pet than to help a male or teenage stranger in danger, new research has revealed.

A poll conducted for the blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan found that overwhelmingly, nearly four out of five people in the South East (82%) would be willing to help their pet if it was in danger.

However, only 56% of the 316 respondents from the South East would be willing to help a man on his own and just 66% would help a teenager they didn’t know, if they saw them in a risky situation. Pensioners (92%) and children (87%) on their own in danger were most likely to enlist the sympathy of a kind-hearted stranger in the region.

When asked what would prevent them from stepping in to help a stranger in danger, 42% of people in the South East said they would be concerned about risking their own safety, while 39% said they would not know how to help.

Anthony Nolan released the results today as it announced that, after forty years of appealing for bone marrow donors, more than three people every day are given a secondhance at life, thanks to a generous stranger – but it’s still not enough.

The overall YouGov survey [1] of 2,353 adults across Britain also revealed that ‘selfie culture’ may be making us more selfish when it comes to helping strangers.

Some 15% of British 18 to 24-year-olds have pretended to be on the phone or texting to avoid helping a stranger who was in danger.

And nearly one in ten (9%) in this age group surveyed online have seen a person in danger and posted about it on social media, rather than helping – although on a positive note, almost half of this age group (47%) have intervened and offered to help.

The survey also shed light on the areas people are from who are most likely to have helped a stranger. Only 49% of adults in the East Midlands having helped a person in danger, the poll reveals. In contrast, 63% of adults in both Wales and Scotland – well over half - have stepped in to help a stranger.

Meanwhile, in the South East, only 55% have intervened to help a stranger in a risky situation.

The findings are particularly significant for Anthony Nolan, which relies on the kindness of strangers who join the charity’s register of potential bone marrow donors. Despite the survey showing 71% of people from the South East would be willing to donate stem cells to a stranger with blood cancer, in reality less than one per cent (0.8%) of the British population are on the Anthony Nolan register.[2]

Anthony Nolan Chief Executive, Henny Braund, said: “These findings have raised thought provoking questions around how far we would each go to save a stranger’s life.

“We can all be guilty of seeing a stranger in need and assuming someone else will help. But every day, three amazing donors give someone the chance of life by donating their stem cells, without knowing anything about the person they are helping. That is quite remarkable.”

When asked what would prevent them from stepping in to help a stranger in danger, the most common reasons people gave were concern about risking their own safety and not knowing how to help.

But it’s not all bad news – only five per cent said that they wouldn’t help a stranger because they were ‘too busy’, and seven per cent said it would be because they ‘didn’t know the person’.

“What is interesting is that most people, whatever their age, aren’t inherently selfish – they simply don’t know how to help, or they are understandably worried about their own safety,” Henny Braund commented. “What many people may not realise is that when it comes to saving a stranger with blood cancer, there is a very simple way to do something truly life-changing for another family.”

Find out how you can save the life of a stranger – visit www.anthonynolan.org/strangers

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Dunstable Today provides news, events and sport features from the Luton area. For the best up to date information relating to Luton and the surrounding areas visit us at Dunstable Today regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Dunstable Today requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.